Criminal Girls 2 Coming West in September

Criminal Girls 2: Party Favors to Hit North America and Europe this September!

NIS America is happy to announce that Criminal Girls 2: Party Favors will be available on the Playstation Vita on September 20 in North America and September 23 in Europe! The game expands on the universe and gameplay mechanics of Criminal Girls: Invite Only with a brand new cast of characters, each with their own tale to tell.

About

Return to the depths of Hell, and guide a brand-new group of Delinquents through the Reformation Program. This time around, there’s a twist. One of the girls in your group of seven isn’t quite what she seems. As you journey through the Hell Spire, you’ll have to deal with the seeds of mistrust as you struggle to unite your team and overcome their sins and the bonds of damnation. Uncover each girl’s unique story, and shape them into the women they need to be in order to find redemption.

Key Features

• Deep RPG Character Growth – Using the brand-new skill tree, you’ll be able to guide the growth of the girls along either an S or M path using the new Coaching system. Motivate and Coach your team into defensive maestros or offensive powerhouses.

• A Mystery to Uncover – This time around, one of your Reformation Candidates might not be quite what she seems. As you climb the Hell Spire, you’ll need to uncover each candidate’s sin, as well as the mystery one of them hides to help them all find trust and redemption.

• A Complete PS Vita Experience – Take full advantage of the PS Vita’s touchscreen capabilities and interact with the game’s characters through multiple mini-games. Each character will react to your touch with the game’s Live 2D system which makes the artwork and characters feel like they’re right there with you!

Four Changes to Criminal Girls 2: Party Favors

Since you’re here, you probably know that we are bringing Criminal Girls 2: Party Favors to North America and Europe for the PS Vita this September. As with the first game in the series, some of the content will be changed to accommodate this international release. Since this can be an issue for some, I want to give you some insight into our process and exactly what’s changing so you can make an informed decision.

Some of you might be asking, “Why change anything in the first place?” The answer to that question is pretty complicated overall, but here’s the short version: While we do our best to make all our fans happy, we also need to make sure that our games can be released on the platform they’re made for, and released in the various territories in which we sell them.

So how will Criminal Girls 2: Party Favors differ from the Japanese release?

1. Redrawn art

We had a bit more time to work on this title. We didn’t want to make any alterations to the game that would be jarring to the experience or feel “off,” so we worked with the original artist of the game who redrew the art for the Motivation scenes that might have caused issues due to their explicit nature. We didn’t want the game experience to change though, so we are also investing the extra effort into incorporating Criminal Girls 2: Party Favors’s unique Live 2D effect into the new art.

2. Terminology changes

As with the first in the series, Criminal Girls: Invite Only, “Punishment” will be framed as “Motivation,” and other terminology changes from the first game will also apply here. There may be a few other translation changes as well. This reduces the power distance between the player character and the girls in the Reformation Program and makes the activities of the game more consensual.

3. No native language dialogue

Like with Criminal Girls: Invite Only, we will not be dubbing the game in English. The game’s text will be in English, but the spoken dialogue will be the original Japanese voice track.

4. No Motivation scene dialogue

Some of this could cause an issue with power distance, or perceived consent of the activities of the game. This dialogue also represented a technical challenge to localization, because there are no subtitles. Thus, another reason this dialogue was removed was to avoid a situation of no text to accompany several lines of untranslated Japanese being spoken.